Thursday, March 15, 2012

Okay I know it has been a long time since I last posted something, but I've been fighting a gnarly cold.
I'm still not 100% but I feel a lot better than I did two weeks ago.

So what's new?

Besides having a great trip up in half Moon Bay, I was able to meet with a surgeon from Stanford to talk about my toe-to-hand surgery. As I've previously posted, I was a bit concerned about risking my toe for the chance of a thumb. The procedure seemed pretty extreme; surgically remove almost the entire second toe up into my foot and placing it onto the small piece of bone that was my thumb.

This surgeon agreed with me and says that there is not enough skin, muscle, or bone around my thumb area to guarantee a good outcome in one procedure.

So what are we to do?
On March 12th Dr. Chang is going to take bone from my hip and attach it to my hand
(and now for the really weird part)
and then attach my hand to my groin.
Yep my groin.
I will be Al Bundy-ing for about 1 month while the bones join and skin grows around the piece of hip/thumb. Then I will "get a break" before he takes a piece of my big toe and attaches it to the hip bone/thumb.

When I described this series of procedures to my friend Joel he told me that it's a good thing I don't have kids because I would confuse them with my version of the "Dem Bones" Song:
"The toe is connected to the hip bone,
The hip bone is connected to the thumb..."
[That's just what I was thinking too Joel]

At least I'll have my prosthetic right arm while my only hand is tied to my body...Wrong.

Last week I found out Anthem does not believe that a prosthetic right arm is "medically necessary" for me and have declined the request for one. Hanger has told me that this is not uncommon and has already started the appeals process.

Unfortunately, this is not a quick process.

Still not fired up to be without hands for a month, but at least I'll be in the Bay Area (even if it's in a hospital/care facility) and the doc does not expect any gait problems when he gets around to removing my toe.